


Good Help

by lynndyre



Category: The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24504229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: For all the enemies the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel has made and cultivated in the bloodied soil of France, it is one of their allies who comes closest to claiming the life of Sir Percy's lieutenant.
Relationships: Percy Blakeney & Andrew Ffoulkes
Kudos: 13





	Good Help

For all the enemies the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel has made and cultivated in the bloodied soil of France, it is one of their allies who comes closest to claiming the life of Sir Percy's lieutenant.

Say rather, a former ally, who with the threat of the Committee too close and the demands of the League and the danger they present judged too great, Citizen Dubois of the smallest in on the lesser traveled road to Calais is caught between two masters and bears only loathing for them both. He has been paid to have rooms and food and sundries prepared--

Sir Andrew is simply unlucky enough to be the first to arrive to the rendezvous, the first and only to drink Citizen Dubois' special wine.

Long practice has given Andrew ample store of that mixture of patience and awareness which is essential to a lookout of any kind. Yet on this evening, as he sits, the evening lengthens and unease turns to discomfort, spilling cold down his spine, and fog creeps across his mind. The others of the League are delayed --No concern, the roads will be worse away from the city, and there is no pressing danger but the time weighs strangely, and the innkeeper's attentions are tense and obsequious by turns.

Finally in the hour after dark, hoofbeats draw near, and pull up to the lane outside. When the door opens - Percy and Tony blowing in with the night wind behind them, and Hastings and Glynde in their train- Andrew rises to meet them, but the floor dips and slides away beneath him. Both hands on the wooden table fail to hold it steady, and the shadows at the edges of the firelight dance like the fire across his vision.

"Something's-- wrong." In the moment, it is the only thought he can hold, and his tongue is thick in his mouth. Andrew blinks, but his eyes and thoughts will focus only in fits and spurts. 

There is Tony beside him, and Percy reaching for his face. Whatever he sees in Andrew's eyes, he swears outright, and rounds on the innkeeper. 

Citizen Dubois's face paling. 

Percy reaching for the decanter.

Dubois takes a step back, then another and Hastings catches him by the arms. Andrew shakes his head to clear it, and the ground rolls beneath him.

Percy dips one manicured fingertip into the wine, touching it to his tongue, and when he lifts his head there is something genuinely frightening in the aspect of his face.   
"Tony. Make him vomit."

Tony's face is apologetic but set and determined, but Andrew is hardly like to argue- he feels half detached from himself. Poison? He turns, to look for Percy again. Blekeney is burning, bright and dangerous. Then Tony is pulling Andrew to the next room, and dizziness blurs into an embarrassing nightmare- trying to be sick, trying not to bite Dewhurst's fingers, being made to drink thin French milk until it pours up out of him, nose burning. 

Sounds are indistinct, and his fingers, his lips are numb, tingling, until he can't feel his grip on Tony's jacket or force his tongue to obey.

The last thing he remembers is Percy's voice. The words are fading out but Andrew reaches for that presence all the same.

"Percy- Worth it."

Andrew lives. The poison, heavier than wine, had settled, taken for sediment, for a bad vintage, and Andrew all unknowing had drunk what little was purest- and delay had kept any of his fellows from danger. Some of it Tony tells to him after the fact- Their leader, incandescent. Dubois' smuggling, and other crimes, exposed to the Committee. The ride to the coast, and thence to Percy's northern estate, where a man might recover from suspicious hurts in full privacy from the ton.

Some Lord Anthony Dewhurst holds close, and does not tell. That moment of private fear that Percy might kill the innkeeper with his bare hands. Riding double through the night, both hands on his horse and his companion, and no way to see, in the dark, if Andrew still breathed. 

Nineteen to obey, they remain. And every one of them will fight to keep it so.

**Author's Note:**

> For May h/c_bingo, in which I am mean to Andrew. ♥


End file.
